Civ 5 Wishlist

[Nerdfish]

Thinking about Spear vs Tank inspired me to come up with this.

What about giving each unit an armor rating smaller then their strength (depending on the unit). This value is the minimal strength required to do any damage to this unit. A unit that has lost a combat round receive no damage if enemy's unmodified strength does not exceed its armor rating. If a unit is attacked by an enemy with armor rating greater then its base strength, it loses automatically.

Things like Battleship, Gunship, Mech infantry or Modern Armor would have high armor rating that prevent pre-industrial units from ever putting a dent in them. Marines and SAM infantry would still be vulnerable to pre-industrial units, if there are sufficiently many of them.

Some mid-game units, like war elephants or knights, would also have high armor rating relative to their strength, making them deadly against obsolete units.

[Xetal]

1.) Fight for resources/Limited resources: The most important thing I'd like to see for Civilization 5 is a system where resources are limited and are a major source of competition and fighting. In order to do this you would need to create a system that is a mix between Colonization and Civilization 4. For example, a standard iron mine might produce 10 iron/turn for your empire, and each swordsman would take 5 iron to create. The amount mined could be increased by technology, land upgrades, or upgrades/buildings in the nearby city. The amount could be diminished by things like poor morale or by the resource being over-used and turning into a "diminished" resource that only provides 50% or 25% of its original yield. Once gathered, the resource goes into a "central pool" that any of your connected cities can use.

A system would create a more realistic competiton for resources, as well as creating diplomatic oportunities (with resource trading) and strategic decisions for use and amounts to hold in reserve of a resource. Some units, such as tanks, battleships, or aircraft would require resources any turn that they perform an action (a tank might require 1 unit of oil every turn it acts, a battleship might require 10 units of oil or 2 units of uranium any turn it acts, and a jet fighter might require 3 units of oil every turn it acts). Resource strains such as this would require some strategic decision making on if you should create more mechanized units or units like marines/army rangers. It would also create a realistic strain on resources where control of these resources would be important and the trade of key resources would lead to diplomacy in situations where nations might otherwise be hostile to eachother (see: USA and Saudi Arabia)

A resource system like this would let you store unused resources for later use or trade, or store resources like oil to use as a buffer if you suddenly need to mobilize your military. Luxury products could also use a similar system, allowing you to use them for happiness/health in your various cities (or release them to be used only in certain cities).


2.) Borders need to be decided by generals and diplomats, not by artists and musicians. A gap in culture between two nearby cities owned by different nations should create unrest and should result in reduced productivity, taxes, and eventually riots. A gap in culture should not magically change the borders between the two countries. Borders should be decided by diplomacy and by military action. At the end of any conflict between nations, border decisions should be part of the standard "cease fire" portion of the diplomacy. In addition to that you should be able to use peacetime diplomacy to trade neighboring nations for land.


3.) One thing that I have always thought was lacking from Civlization games is a lack of unit diversity. There seems to be very little strategic decision making when deciding what types of units to create. Examples best illustrate this:

Example 1: Jet Fighter. In Civilization 4 there is only one advanced fighter, the "Jet Fighter". Realistically there is a big difference between technology in newer fighters as well as their purpose. There should be some strategic thinking involved when you pick what type of aircraft to build. My suggestion would be to have at least two generations to pick from (Jet Fighter, Advanced Jet Fighter) as well as splitting them into two different types of aircraft: Interceptors and Fighter Bombers. Interceptors excel at intercepting enemy aircraft but are not designed for air-to-ground combat. Fighter-bombers aren't quite as strong air-to-air as interceptors, but they're also very useful for air-to-ground strikes.

Example 2: Cavalry: In Civ 4 there really isn't a choice between types of cavalry. There should be a light cavalry which excels at flanking and harassing fighting as well as heavier "Knights" which are heavier and slower, but stronger for striking enemies more diretly. There isn't really a difference in the level of technology between the units, just the purpose that they are created for. You can see a similar situation in infantry. After infantry you just have "mechanized infantry" with the ability to get marines which are kind of a half-upgrade. Realistically you should choose between modern marines, rangers, and a more mechanized infantry. There are advantages to having modern non-mechanized infantry and it should be a strategic decision which to build (rangers, for example, wouldn't use oil when they act where mechanized infantry would)

Example 3: Tanks: In Civ4 there is only "Tank" as a tank unit. Realistically there is a wide array of different tanks that were buit. There is a big difference, for example, between a Soviet T-28 and an American M2. At the very least you should have to choose between a "Light Tank" and a "Heavy Tank". There are similar decisions to be made in melee infantry along the ages as well.

Having choices like this to make about unit types would create a strategic element where you need to think about the needs of your empire when you choose what to build. Instead of just building a swarm of the "latest and greatest" you would have to decide what you actually needed and what you could actually afford in terms of time, manufacturing ability, and resources.


4.) Military technology dispersion and guerrilla/irregular units. This is a two-fold suggestion: The first is that once you reach certain points of technology (rifling, for example) then it should let ALL nations build and upgrade units to Guerrilla or Irregular units that are very cheap to build and maintain (and use gunpowder weapons), but that are considerably weaker than organized Infantry, Rangers, or Marines. It is silly to see one nation using aircraft and tanks and their neighbors using Knights and pikemen. Technology disperses enough that technologically backwater nations are able to throw togeather something to reasonably fight with.

The other part of this suggetion is that discarded weapons are often sold to nations that cannot build the weapons for themselves. A good example of this is outdated American aircraft being sold to places like Iraq or Israel. The best way to handle this in Civilization 5 would be to give you a choice when you are disbanding or upgrading a unit. When you upgrade or disband a unit you should be given the choice to break down the unit (which returns 50% of the raw resources, such as iron, that it took to make) or they can sell the unit to the arms market (which allows other nations to buy it, generating income for the nation selling it). This situation would help to balance the smaller nations in the "technology -vs- economy" aspect of the game as well as creating a strategic decision to make for nations upgrading their military. The price could be based on a buy/sell system. This sytem would allow a nation to put the hardware they're trying to sell on the market for the price they're willing to sell it as, and it would also allow nations trying to buy hardware to list the hardware they're trying to buy, the amount they're trying to buy, and the price they're willing to pay. The buy/sell market would allow the units to trade hands at whatever price the world market in that particular game would support. This system would also allow wealthy smaller nations to put in "buy orders" for military equipment they want and allow more industrial nations to build these and fill the orders.

In addition to the above system, you should be able to directly make deals with nations to buy and sell different units. A real life example of this would be the United States directly selling Jet Fighters to Israel.

5.) Research and Technology really needs to be handled differently. The real problem is that you know exactly what technology you're going to get and the benefits that it provides. I think a more realistic example would be to budget X amount of your budget towards different advancements that you can earmark towards a certain field (Say: Science, Religion, Engineering, etc...). Your researchers would then work towards advancements in that area. You, as a player, would not know what particular technology would come next nor would you know when the advancement would come. The actual technology tree would be randomized somewhat so that it is not predictable. I think that not being able to predict exactly what technologies you're getting next would make the game much more realistic as well as more enjoyable. One of the things that makes Civ games really interesting is that you have to react the to unexpected, and a completely predictable technology system (like the one that Civ4 has) really takes a lot away from this kind of challenge.

6.) Realistic unit upkeep: This was somewhat covered above with the requirement of oil to allow units like tanks or jet fighters to function. In addition to this there should be a realistic currency cost to maintaining different units. A unit like Infantry, a Marine, or a Ranger should be much cheaper to maintain than a Jet Fighter or a Battleship. Likewise, a unit like Pikemen should be cheaper to maintain than a Knight. A more realistic maintenence for this units would again force strategic decision making when you create units: Can you afford to support 20 units of Knights, or can you only afford a couple Knights and have a sizable army of Macemen instead?

[Xetal]

7.) Nuclear weapons need to be designed a bit differently, including M.A.D. Start out with only nuclear bombs, then later in technology allow short range nuclear warheads, then later in technology allow ICBMs. In addition to this, you should be able to "pre-target" warheads on another nation so that if they launch a nuke at you then your nuke will automatically launch at them. Using this you could pre-target your different nuclear warheads so that if either of you launch at eachother it would ensure Mutually Assured Destruction. This is a more realistic way of handling nuclear weapons, and should produce more realistic results when dealing with two nations that are both nuclear powers. For early nuclear weapons, allowing a nuclear bomb to be attached to a bomber and having it only take effect if the bomber is successful, and short ranged nuclear weapons that could be fired at nearby enemy nations or fired from submarines.

8.) Diversity pays: One of the frustrating things about Civ3 and Civ4 is that you are penalized for diversity. You either really need to go with a specalist economy or a cottage economy, etc... A more realistic approach is that diversity pays. For each city you should get a small bonus for engaging in economic diversity. The first cottage or two being worked should provide a bit of a bonus, the first specialist or two working should provide a bit of a bonus, the first mine or two should provide a bit of a bonus, and so on. Ideally the strongest type of economy would be one that embraces using varied tactics instead of being forced into using just one.

This diveristy is also true for military use. It looks like limited units per tile is the way that you're going, and I think this is a good idea. 3-5 land units per tile sounds about right, but they should fight togeather as a unit and diversity should be encouraged. Spamming a massive amount of the same unit should be a weaker strategy than mixing footmen/archers/cavalry. The simplist way to do this would be to provide small bonuses when units work togeather (Archers, for example could get 1 extra first strike if they have allied melee units fighting on their side). For this system, it would work very well if you could attack with your small stack of units from one tile and they all fight as an army and the units that are defending would also fight as a cohesive unit.

9.) City size NOT being decided by food that is immediately nearly. It doesn't make sense for a city population to be determined by the amount of food within a couple miles. It might be more realistic to handle food on an empire level instead of an individual city level, and then allow the player to allocate how much of your food goes to which of your cities. This would limit population in much the same way it is limited in Civlization 4, but it would allow you to better determine where that population would be distributed in your empire. This approach would be more realistic and it would also be more enjoyable to play. An example of this would be the food from the great planes of America being used to feed the people of New York and Chicago.

10.) Allow an "intercept" function for land, naval, and air units. This command would make them not able to move during your turn, but if an enemy came within their movement range you could activate them to intercept the enemy (on the enemys turn). This would create a more realistic and more playable system for defending your border (especially when you're dealing with fast units -vs- fast units). This would allow a better coastal defense and allow more realistic border standoffs with land units.

That's a good start of suggestions/wish list from me. I've been playing since the orignial Colonization and Civilization 1, so I could probably come up with a couple more things, but those are the 10 most important things to me.

Posted in the other "wish list" thread as well, didn't see this much longer one first and figured it would be more appropriately listed in this thread instead.

[Arch Duke]

For the AI to be able to do everything the human can, and well, on Noble.

No AI cheats.

Improved AI, and that goes for AI compainions. I want to be able to get more out of my AI teammate.

The best part of Civ is it's near infinate replayability.
More options = more fun

I should be able to tell my Ally to stack culture in a particular city and focus on building specific types of units.

[GreaseMonkey]

The ability to make a portion of your population to migrate to another city whenever they complain about overcrowding :D

[cavalier973]

Rich Little. He could do the voices of various personalities as he says famous quotes.

[cavalier973]

A player who chooses a more dictatorial range of civics has more control over what units and buildings that cities construct. As he moves toward more freedom-oriented civics, his choices become more limited. This might require the implementation of something like "political points", that are accumulated based on the overall happiness and well-being of the nation. Want to change civics or build a world wonder? That'll be 100 political points. What? You just used up most of your Polpoints to start a war? Should have thought that decision through, then, what?

Dictatorial civics require less political points to get things done, but at the same time suffer from weaker economies and slower technological advancement than freer societies enjoy.

[cavalier973]

This might be a little more complicated (and may not add to the fun of the game), but what of international currency?

A nation would start out with a commodity currency (probably gold), but once the player has researched the "paper money" tech, and possibly built a "central bank" national wonder, he may switch to fiat currency, where he can order a certain number of currency units (which the player can name!) printed each turn. He must keep an eye on how inflated the currency is, for the price of units and buildings will rise based on how much currency is in circulation. The advantage to the player is that he gets to spend the money before the prices rise.

Example" Sylvania declares war on Freedonia. The president of Freedonia needs add 100 spearmen to the army, which are priced at 50 Freedonian dollars each. He makes the purchase, ordering the Freedonian Central Bank to print up the necessary $5,000. Next turn, the price of everything else rises based on the influx of newly printed dollars. Also, the Freedonian dollar falls in price in relation to other international currencies.

If the player does this too often, the economy collapses, the currency has to be reset, and the player loses massive amounts of political points (see my previous post).

[RideASpaceCowboy]

I've always thought it would be cool if each civilization had completely unique units, allowing it to have its own eras of Antiquity and Modernity as well.

For example, American Antiquity might have musket-wielding Minute Men, but for the sake of gameplay they wouldn't be more powerful than archers in other civilizations.

This would also allow for major revolutions within a civilization. The Russian Empire would exist in Antiquity, but would then be called the Soviet Empire in Modernity.

[shamsael]

Leonard Nimoy

Morgan Freeman, but only because Carl Sagan is no longer with us.

((Not that I don't love Nimoy's Civ 4 contribution, but I want a sequel, not a repeat))

[bertipa]

Water has been THE most important resource of all human history and it still is.
Can this be reflected in the gameplay?

P.S. I would also like a lot to have e spherical planet :)

[Treesmasha]

As a long time player of Civilization, since Civ I, one of the things that has always bothered me was the level of corruption that large empires suffer in their far flung cities, regardless of what you do about it.

I have one small suggestion. My suggestion is that corruption should be NOT upon the distance from ones capital, but due to the amount of time it takes to travel to a city from ones capital. This should be based upon a common unit which could in fact be the settler. But as technology improves, corruption would decrease such that by the time you have a large rail net work or airports in every city corruption should be at it's minimal point for a given government form.

[BlackFalcon09]

Since they're going into a deeper form of diplomacy and have leaders actually speaking their native tongue, I hope they include something that I've always wished they would put in: hindered communication with newly met civilizations.

Take for example the European nations reaching the Americas 500 years ago. They couldn't carry a full-fledged conversation, let alone get basic sentences across with the natives. No side knew the other's language. I've always been slightly annoyed with how you automatically understand another nation you've just met, especially before either of you have the basic technologies of alphabet and writing.

It'd be nice if you could hear them speak and a subtitle shows you how you're reading their body language, and you have a choice of actions to perform (give them food/gold/clothing, show them some of your nation's culture/entertainment, etc.), each will either offend them or build your relationship, but you don't know which. After your initial meeting, you could try to convince them to let someone live among them to learn the language (and/or allow one of theirs to learn yours). This person could live there purely peacefully or try and be a spy as well. By doing so you could be fully able to communicate with them after a few turns. Of course, they could refuse and it would take an even longer time to break the communication barrier.

With speech recordings in this game, they could even have gibberish at the first meeting when you don't know it, some broken sentences of their actual language after you learn some, and then eventually we hear the language clearly.

Some nations you can immediately communicate with upon your first encounter if you have a mutual connection with them -- another nation you know has learned it and over time some of your people have from them. Of course, if no one has ever met this nation, or any nation in that secluded land (like the Europeans coming to the Americas), you're at square one.

[Owed_To_Civ]

Usually when I play a game I'm left with a list of things that I think would've been better. I've never played a perfect game, but Civ4 came pretty close.

Mostly agree. I definitely have a list of improvements for Civ IV, but it arose over the course of months/years, not days/weeks like with so many poorly-designed games I have been subject to.

Civ IV did an excellent job of simplifying the overall interaction with the game, making it faster and easier for veterans and newbs both. (As well as much more accessible for the latter.)

The biggest area that needs improvement, though -- and it's a general thing -- is end-game, large-empire management. I rarely if ever use automated city build orders, and try to avoid using automated settlers, but when you are dealing with an end-game mammoth empire, it just gets fatiguing to do it all by hand, and the end result is the game slows to a crawl.

So, suggestion #1 would be a means whereby the player can enable automation, but have it be completely customizable, even to the extent of players writing their own scripts in an external language (Python, LUA, whatever). It would be great to be able to make logical scripts (with conditional branching) like "if we have >= n spearmen, start making swordsmen" or whatever. Failing the script "fanciness", it would be nice to at least have multiple automation build orders to select from ... i.e. preset lists that could be stored and called-up for repeated use across game sessions. One could have a "standard" list for naval cities, army-building cities, settler/worker cities, etc. Yes, IV kinda does this with storable city queues, but I am talking being able to edit them offline (i.e. outside the game) as well as giving them meaningful textual names, not just "queue 1", "queue 2", etc. another alternative might be the ability for player to dictate a civ-wide or continent-wide (or region-wide, with player-definable regions, of course) quota of units, to be filled and delivered to rally point as quickly as possible.

Would love to see this kind of player-capable customization could be used in other areas of the game. Like defining the attack rules for a stack. (I'm sure we don't all always use the conventional "optimal" logic for attacking w/ stacks), build-order rules for automated settlers building improvements, etc.

Suggestion #2 - also related to the end game. When you are in a buy-rushing economy, there is no efficient way to handle buy-rushing in large empires. The best way is to use the F1 screen, select all the cities you want to rush, and rush them all. But even this has its problems, not the least of which is that it's a manual operation you must do every turn. Would like to see this problem go away, perhaps by means of a "buy-rush if possible" button on city manager screen.

Suggestion #3 - Again with the compliments for Civ IV: it puts almost every piece of information one or two clicks away, in a relatively intuitive way. But one problem that has always annoyed me is that (unless i am mistaken) when you get a diplomatic contact from someone asking you to "cancel all deals with so-and-so", you have no way of knowing what those deals are. I would like to see any such oversights completely eliminated from the interface design. (Devs, you were so close on IV!!! Let's make it perfect! :D ) In general, it would be great to be able to drop the "modality" of the interface wherever possible. (for non-programmers: get rid of screens/dialog boxes that make you give an answer before you can move on to any other task.)

Suggestion #4 again with the queuing: not sure what ever happened to the ability to queue buildings with prerequisites (like you could shift+click a library and a university; it was taken out in a patch for some reason that completely eludes me) but it would be great to see this come back! It will increase efficiency in managing the civ and speed up the pace of the game.

Suggestion #5 would be nice.... "quick load" -- make it actually quick! ;)

#6 almost forgot -- something every game should have these days, at least multiplayer ones: integrated VOIP.

#7 better "shuffle" implementation: Tectonics is probably my favorite map generator, but it can't be included in the shuffle or random map scripts, right? Any shuffle option should allow players to add/remove all map styles from the pool of choices, as desired.

That's it for now. Let me go play a couple rounds of BTS and I'm sure I'll recall a few more, but these were the biggies. Overall, the end-game empire management is the most important. I don't want the AI making decisions for me, other than by following rules I design.

Civ V is great news, but I'm not even done with IV yet!!

All in all, my greatest hopes are that Civ V doesn't regress in any major way, because Civ IV was really a high-point in the franchise and in gaming overall. Seriously. And I hope, just because the game is coming out this fall, that it's not too late for these kinds of ideas -- and all the other great ideas -- to be implemented.

PS ...just a general rumination: I do miss the old city-spamming days of I, II sometimes, though. ;)

PPS -- if anyone takes exception with any of my suggestions, because I am missing some present way of doing things, by all means please send me a PM! ;)

[painterQ]

1.
If we are talking about realism wanted changes, unlimited city's...

2.
100+ nations...

3.
ALOT!!! bigger maps... (10,000x10,000 minimum?)

4.
BRIDGES/TUNNELS!!! ->
The posibility of building a bridge or tunnel across 1 square(50kilometers?)
there was a flaw back in civ1 where you could build road/railroad on sea/ocean. Get a teck add where you can at great cost ofc. build a bridge over 1 maybee later 2 squares

5.
In civ2 you can change squares...
Realistic the japanese erode mountains into the ocean to create new land,,,
the dutch/netherlands, dam up ocean/lakes to create new land->

6.
Dam's to lock of shallow bedded ocean/lakes to create new land.

7.
civ2 does not change settings but civ3 does, this makes it impossible for me to get my friend to play civ3, so we still just play civ2 when i visit him.
what I'm trying to say is, if you play and read silmutaniusly, civ3 changes the setup? of what your doing besides gaming civ.

[Hypnotoad]

I have a few suggestions:

1) Expanded tech tree:
The entire tech tree should be revamped with more options and there should be a far more extended stone age and future age. The entire tech tree should take far longer to go through.

Bronze working should not be on the second tier and there should be futuristic units at the end of the game.

Ideas for some new techs include stone working, stone tools, weaving, metalworking (comes before bronze working), crop rotation, wooden construction; stone construction (separation of the original construction tech), metal tools (synergy with bronze and then iron working to increase general hammer production slightly), bridge building (should be more difficult to cross rivers), irrigation, and animal husbandry should be split into 2-3 other techs.

2) Second tech/upgrade tree:
There should be a set percentage of research rate that goes into upgrading that which has already been researched. This should be done at the same time as normal research and should be available in a separate tree.

There should be enough researches in this tree that it's difficult and unlikely that any player will be able to research all of them, this would help to differentiate each player on a particular map and also give an extra strategic overlay to the game in that you can choose what you want to upgrade to try and give yourself the greatest advantage.

For example, when warriors become available, 5 tactics and 5 equipment researches become available to upgrade them and offer permanent, albeit small advantages to their effectiveness.

Then when you acquire your first corn field, 5 corn care upgrades become available to increase the production over time and 5 more when a farm is built that increase the effectiveness of the farm itself (different upgrades for different resources, even of the same type i.e. corn doesn't apply to rice or wheat and copper doesn't apply to iron).

The reason there are two sets of 5 upgrades for each is that one should be readily available to research as soon as the unit/resource/terrain is available, but the other is normal research dependent i.e. the 5 tactics upgrades can be researched immediately for a warrior as soon as the warrior unit can be built but the 5 gear upgrades might depend on nothing for levels 1 and 2 but require bronze working for 3 and 4 and iron working for level 5.

3) More unit options:
I don't like that by strength units supersede the last unit that was available of the same type i.e. warrior < spearman < axeman < swordsman < maceman.

What I'd like to see is the ability to have all of them start off at the same strength with unique but balanced bonuses against other units.

For example, at the start of the game you might have the ability to create warriors with a strength of 2 that have an advantage when attacking others but also spearmen with a strength of 2 that have an advantage when defending.

Then in midgame after bronze working is researched, you might be able to build axemen with a strength of 4 that have the same attacking advantage as warriors and spearmen with a strength of 4 with the same defending advantage (also a bonus vs cavalry) but also a swordsman with a strength of 4 with a city attacking advantage and macemen with a strength of 4 with a melee troop advantage.

Then later after iron working is researched they might all have a base strength of 6.

4) Unit upgrades:
This sort of feeds into the previous point, but I'd like to see the ability to build up the units' strengths(as a number) with upgraded techs and training.

For example, you might start with a spearman with a stone tipped spear and with a strength of 2, but through researching upgraded tactics you might reach a strength of 2.5 or 3 and might have the ability to teach them to use shields to increase their defensive advantages (percentage advantage when being attacked).

5) Change worker mechanic:
Workers shouldn't run around building upgrades, instead they should get parked in a city and through their presence, a tile upgrade building queue should open up in a city, they should also have the ability to be used to work an extra tile in a city when not being used to upgrade something. Or alternatively, they should add a specific number of hammers to the city when they are inactive and the city is constructing a building. They should still have to leave the city to build roads and railroads.

6) More resources:
Pearls, opals, hardwood, oilfish, bees (honey), olives, fruit (other than bananas), hard stone, salt, millet, buckwheat, beans, tin, pigments, etc.

Definitely try to add more ocean based resources.

7) Second and third production resources:
Wax, candles, paper, lamp oil, glue, ink, artwork, jewelry, steel, bronze, etc.

8) Terrain:
Not all rivers are the same width, there is high ground that isn't a hill or mountain. There should be plateaus that give different advantages than that of a hill and some rivers should be uncrossable in certain areas without certain techs available.

9) Ferrys:
You should be able to cross wide rivers and small amounts of ocean/sea to islands so workers should be able to build ferries.

10) Make a use for surplus goods:
I hate having 4 fish, 2 cattle and 3 iron only to remember that it's actually a disadvantage to have 4 fish rather than 1 fish, 1 crab and a 2 clams, even though crabs and clams typically produce less food than fish. So I would like to see more of a use to come of surplus/stacking goods.

Maybe just make the bonus resource advantages stack, or make one unit of a resource only enough for a certain number of cities.

11) Multiple uses per tile:
It isn't unheard of for there to be multiple natural resources in the same area. Instead of just randomly putting multiple resources together though, the system could be different sized sources of different goods with a maximum of 3 upgrades per tile.

For example, on one tile it could be possible to build a farm for some wheat and also a cottage and a watermill if it's on a river, but the cottage wouldn't be able to upgrade all the way to a town, its maximum level would be village because there isn't quite enough space. Whereas on a separate tile where there are lots of cattle, one large(occupies 2 spaces) or massive(occupies 3 spaces) cattle pasture which then produces more cattle as a regular resource.

This way individual tiles can be tailored to the needs of a city to a certain extent, producing a different spread of resources for a given worked tile.

12) City size:
Cities shouldn't always remain on a single tile, with expanded population the actual city should spill over into the surrounding countryside, when a larger city is being conquered, the entire city would need to be occupied and troops stationed in every area of the city would have to be destroyed.

13) Combat:
a) There should be civilian militia that makes it more difficult to occupy cities of a larger size, they should only appear while defending their city from a siege.

b) Sieges shouldn't be conducted from the tile outside the city, the attacking army should have a choice of entering a siege-state and vanish off the map and be visible when mousing over the city.

c) If ranged troops are available in a city under siege, they should be able to attack the sieger en masse and inflict a small amount of damage on the attackers for every turn they stand outside bombarding the defenders.

d) All cavalry should have the ability to sally forth from a city under siege to attack the siegers and damage siege engines and troops without the chance to die (but can take damage).

e) Reinforcing a city under siege should be a chancy effort. When attempting to reinforce a city, the unit should have a chance to take damage, with less chance as part of a large army, if the city attempting to be reinforced already has a large garrison or if the attacking army is small.

f) Combat shouldn't be a series of 1v1 fights.

[Jengie]

All they need to do is make the basic civ somthing like the rise of mankind mod from civ IV. Thats alone would do it for me. And the other ideas i mentioned earlier.

But from what i've seen so far they are not really following up on a lot of what we say here. Im seeing a shift towards civ revolutions. Lesser units, fewer cities. hoping they are not ruining it.

[Montefeltro]

OK deep breath...
1. An end to culture creep. It's just plain annoying when your tiles keep getting nicked one by one, and not very realistic either. Borders don't change according to who's got a stronger culture (I realise they are supposedly "cultural borders" but in every other respect they behave like concrete national boundaries). To stop culture becoming irrelevant, maybe there could be a mechanism whereby having a better culture tha your neighbour lets you "steal" population from their cities, to represent emigration to a more popular Civ.
2. Two UUs for every Civ. They are a great way of making each Civ different and characterful, and they don't clog up the rules because they replace basic units rather than adding new ones on top. I know they'd be hard to find historically for the more marginal Civs but I'm sure it could be managed. More modern era UUs would be nice too.
3. Natural disasters. It wouldn't be hard to programme in the odd earthquake or volcanic erruption, and it would add in a few more challenges to deal with in peacetime. Maybe a plague feature based on health ratings and spreading along trade routes? If need be this could be added to the events function, which is great and should be more frequent.
4. More early military units. The breadth of units available in the modern era is great; paratroopers, tanks, SAMs, etc. This allows for a variety of different tactical combinations, and it would be nice to have the same level of choice available to spice up warfare across the millenia. Yes, this would add more complications but if modernity can handle it why can't the rest of history?
5. More varied movement values for land units. In Civ 4 there's only really two basic movement levels, which doesn't really reflect the range of manouvreability present in real life. There is large number of different movement values for naval units, however, so surely this can be granted to landlubbers too?
6. Bring back Hitler! No, I'm not a Neo-Nazi, but it shouldn't be ignored that he was one of the 20th century's most important political figures and he led Germany to its greatest ever territorial extent. He was evil, of course, but Stalin and Genghis Khan weren't exactly Mr Nice Guys either and they still got included. What worries me more is that he doesn't even feature in the Second World War scenario, instead being replaced by some non-entity Chancellor Von Pappen. Is Civ involved in some kind of Hitler-denying-conspiracy? Besides, there would be a certain degree of vindictive irony in converting him to Judaism...

<and exhale>

[Bhavv]

I meant to put this post in this thread, but put in another one first by mistake.


I would wish it possible to plant agricultural, and breed animal resources with the following requirements.

To plant a resource, you need to have one under your control. Planted resources could maybe mature over time like cottages in Civ 4, e.g. if a normal Wheat gives +3 food, planting a wheat resource give no extra food for 10 turns (still needs to grow), then +1 food every 10 turns after that until it becomes a full +3 wheat resource after 40 turns. However, they wouldnt grow while being worked, so to get a full extra resource you would have to plant and leave it for 40 turns.

Agriculture would enable planting cereal type food, Animal Husbandry for animals, calender for plantation resources. Planting a resource takes 10 turns (no multiple workers on tiles right?)

An irrigated planted resource would have its growth counter reduced from 10 turns to 9. Fortifying a worker on the tile would further reduce the time taken to grow by 1 turn as well (now 8 turns), but this wouldnt stack with multiple workers. A granary would allow you to work the resource while it grows at double the normal length of time. A supermaket would then allow you to work a planted resource while it develops at normal speed.

The growth times could then be adjusted to balance for the different difficulty levels.

Planted resources could also increase the chance of a new type of unit spawning - Pests like locusts and maggots. Locusts would devour planted crops by one whole level of growth per turn, maggots would work on animal resources. The more resources you plant, the more pests you get :mad: .

Chemistry would get you pesticides which can be built as a city improvement to reduce pest spawn chance by 20% within the city radius (+1 unhealthy). Biology would get you Fertilizers (requires chemistry) for a further 10% pest reduction within city radius, and -1 turn penalty for resource growth (and another +1 unhealthy). Supermarkets eliminate unhealthy penalty from pesticides and fertilizers as well as their use explained above. Evolution (new tech) would give access to a genetic engineering national wonder that reduces pests by 20% across your whole empire, and Darwins Voyage world wonder which would reduce crop growth time by 1 turns, and pests by 20% for your civ. Finally, environmentalism gives -20% pests for your whole empire upon discovery, and -1 growth turn for planted resources. Each future tech gives -5% pest spawn rate and -1 turn penalty for growing crops. Total pest elimination would come from future tech 2 + Darwins Voyage, or future tech 6 without Darwins Voyage. This could create a new kind of endgame where you battle it out with growing all your cities into mega cities, and a new victory condition with the first civ to reach 30 size 50 cities wins the game (would maybe have to disable space victory for this to work).

Early on, you would be greatly limited to planting resources due to pests spawns and growth times, but later in the game pests will be reduced by the techs and improvements, and resources will grow much quicker.

As an example to pest spawn chances, they could maybe spawn at a chance of +1% per fully developed grown resource within city radius (for that city only), and +0.5% per fully grown planted resource across your empire.

I just made this idea up and I love it as a form of playing strategy for builders.

[brvheart]

1. Wonder Movies.
2. Wonder Movies.
3. Wonder Movies.

How have these not been brought back yet? It was only of the best parts of Civ II. If they are draining on resourses, have the game run a system check, so that those of us with good systems can still get this extreme joy.

4. Palace upgrades.

[brvheart]

How did you find the advisors for the animated council? Why do it that way in any case?

Civ2 High CouncilAt the time Microprose had created a “multimedia department” featuring Michael Ely, Tim Train, and Jason Coleman, with the idea being to find ways to get better movies and visuals into the games. These guys had already done some really cool film stuff for a “Colonization Gold” edition which sadly never saw the light of day, and we decided that multimedia was a good cost-effective way to get some pizzazz into the game. I don’t actually remember where we came up with the actors for those things, but I thought they had a great Civ flavor.

Hanging GardenOn the subject of the multimedia guys, they also deserve credit for what I thought was the single best audio-visual idea for the entire product: Wonder Movies. Those little Ken-Burns-style pan-and-scans and footage clips made great payoffs when players completed wonders, and they fit perfectly with the importance in the game for wonders. So often games will reward players with great audio visuals for doing almost nothing, or players will struggle against a mighty challenge and see little payoff. I thought the wonder movies were perfectly balanced in being a nice payoff for a significant undertaking, and they came at a reasonable pace and fit aesthetically with the game story as well! On top of that they were cheap cheap cheap to produce! Mostly we licensed stock footage and photos and relied on the editing talents of the multimedia guys, who also put in some of the latest nights of the team because they had to babysit the Premiere program that compiled the movies.

Those Wonder movies were so great that I really pushed hard to get them included in Alpha Centauri as well – it just seemed like too much of a step backward not to include wonder movies, plus they were so helpful in creating a feeling of depth to the science fiction world of the game. But there wasn’t exactly a lot of stock footage available for science fiction scenes (we did manage to license some footage from Baraka like that chickens-down-the-conveyor-belt scene), so they were quite expensive, and I’m not all that surprised the concept was dropped from Civ3 – it probably just got too expensive, although I’d love to see the old Civ2-style ones (or those movies exactly) included in a future edition as a minor flourish.

[Kruelgor]

Multiplayer Feature - All players give orders to their units simultaneously. No unit moves or takes action until ALL players have clicked 'end turn' then all units of all players initiate their action simultaneously. This way you are not sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting long periods for other players to complete their moves. Everyone does their moves at the same time.

[qiangdade]

In addition to my original suggestions of what i would like to see in a civ game in posts #244 and #245, here is a timeline of how i think such a game would progress.

You have your settler and a warrior on the map, as well as a limited amount of raw resources (wood, food etc) that will help you build your first improvements (tile and city) and units.
In the map you see grasslands, forests, hills, mountains, water, rivers and some animals, but no iron, stone, marble, copper, gold etc.

You settle your first city, which has a cultural border and it expands in time with culture like in civ4. Cities no longer depend on the surrounding tiles for production, growth, science etc. i.e. there is no city radius.
You can take advantance of all tiles within your cultural borders, regardless distance from cities (again, no city radius). Tiles need a road to be build on them in order to produce.

First thing to do is prospect the tiles, one by one in your cultural borders to see what kind of resources lie there. You do that by building a prospector in your city (say you need to use 10 units of your initial stack of food).
He moves around from tile to tile and prospects. Say you find a gold deposit of 200 units on a hill, 300 units of stone on another and 100 units of iron on another. Furthermore you find that a grassland tile is optimal for planting maze and another for planting wheat.

As the game progresses and technological advancements become available you can also find other types of resources like say potato to be ideal for a tile.

You use up say 10 units of your initial stack of wood to build a level 1 lumberjack hut on a forest. Level 1 will give you say 2 units of wood per turn. You also use another 20 units of wood to build a mine on one of the hills the resources of which you need the most.
You also get 2 units of that resource per turn with a level 1 mine. Tile improvements are not built by workers. If all needed resources are forehanded the imrpvement is built instantly. If not it is build in as many turns as needed for the resources to be available.
You may also want to build a hunting log on a tile were game is present or domesticate some cows if available in your cultural borders. Not all of these improvemetns are available from the beginning, you need to acquire the appropriate technology.

So how are you getting technologies? Each technology bares values of exploration, religion, trade, military, politics, expansion, science, engineering etc, very much like in colonization where each founding father had some values.
When your civ accumulates the amount of points in each field needed for a tech, that tech becomes available. For example Masonry may need 100 engineering points, 50 religion points and 50 political points. When your civ reaches those number in each field, Masonry becomes available.
How to gather points for each field? Every action you take in the game gives some points in some field: building a mine on a hill gives say 10 engineering points, bulding a road 5 engineering points, building a city 50 expansion points, building a shrine 20 religious points, exploring a tile 5 exploration points, a farm 10 expansion points and so on.


So now you have your first city, how will it grow? You are getting resources per turn from mines and/or lumberjack huts maybe even farms. Your city has a growth meter depending on various factors such as labor, health, attractivity, immigration etc.
Every building you build in your city bares values: A market place offers say 100 labor points and -10 health points, a wonder 1000 attractivity points (depending on the wonder), a shrine happiness points etc. Everything done in a city offers positive or negative points to the growth meter. If the growth meter is in possitive values, the city grows the amount of people that the meter shows positive. If negative people leave and you need to take action.

As in all civ games so far citizens become available as the city grows (in civ games a city of 15 population has 15 citizens that can either work tiles or be turned into specialists). This will not be exactly the case here. As you can take advantage of all tiles just by building a road on them, and you have no city radius, the available citizens can be used by industries (ancient and modern) to produce more elaborate goods from raw resources. If you have a forge in your city, you can asign a citizen to work the forge and produce swords or shildes, which in turn can be used to train army. More elaborate goods become available with tech advance.

All goods be it raw materials or more elaborate your civ produces are piled up in meters and can be used for trade, production of other goods, bribe etc.

So now you have built a couple of thriving cities and have access to many resources and good amounts of them stored. You want to expand by war. Having built swordsmen catapults etc through the various buildings in your cities you declare war to your neighbor who meets you with his army. 1 on 1 combat is boring, and takes too much time in the case of large armies.
Thus it is better to make combat more like in Conquest of the New World or Call to Power. Attacking the enemy takes you in a battlefield screen made of hexagon tiles. Attacker places his army first and defender follows and places his army as suited. The battle takes place either manually turn by turn, much like in a chess game or it can be automated.

After you beat a couple of enemies you control more cities, especially some that are not as advanced as yours due to looting upon capturing them. War has weared off your resources, you need higher production. Luckily meanwhile techs have become available that allow you to upgrade your tile and city improvements. You upgrade your mines from level 1 to level 2 or 3 and get more out of them in order to bring your new cities up to par with the rest.

[qiangdade]

Time goes by, you upgrade your buildings and tile improvements, take advantage of all the tiles that lie within your empire, trade goods with your neighbors for gold or other goods and all is well. But then comes the industrialization era: Energy is needed. Your cities need to be lit, you can't upgrade your industries to the next level available through technological advance.

It is time to build your first energy producing coal factory, which takes a lot of money. As just one factory is not enough to supply energy for your vast empire you build more. Your money and resources are depleted and you still need more to stay in competition with the other industrial powers and secure a place in the world's elite and keep your citizens happy and your empire growing.

A loan is needed. Some of your neighbors seem to have piled up quite a lot of money so you ring their bell and ask for a loan...with interest of course. As you need to repay the sum in an agreed turn time, you need to act quick and use the money wisely in order to come up with the sum. First you build energy factories be it coal, or later nuclear. You also take advantage of the rivers in your empire and build energy producing damms. Later in the game you can use that good-for-nothing desert to set up solar panel fields, or that high mountains with depleted iron mines to build a couple of windmills. In any case you now have sufficient energy to upgrade your industries. Production flows, you sell your goods all over the world and easily repay your debt.

You have so much money that you want to do more. Why not set up a couple of corporations that will close deals with underdeveloped countries, to take advantage of their raw resources. They need the money, you need their resources. That desertous backwards country with the 20 tiles of desert is optimal to set up another solar panel complex in foreign soil. And as you already have sufficient energy for yourself, you invite other players to the table. The ones that need energy but don't have enough money or resources to produce it. A three-way deal takes place. You set up your solar panel complex on foreign soil at own cost. You build a pipe or anything else needed to transfer the energy to the country that needs it. You and the desertous country share the profits of selling the energy to the third country. Everyone is happy: Energy starved country has energy, poor desertous country gets money for the deserts they couldn't use, and your investment is paying off, you get even richer and thirsty for even more ventures. The possibility of war with those countries is also deminishing as they are co-dependent now.

More year go by, you are now very powerful with many ventures all over the world. Your corporations are expanding and becoming multinational. Time to take on space. The first relatively cheap missions are successful. Why not prospect the moon and see what type of resources a greedy civ can find there? Of course Space missions are extremely expensive in comparison to any other earthly projects, but it turns out that mineral deposits on the moon are huge. So you use up gigantic amounts of money and resources to set up a small mining colony on the moon. The yield is terrific. As a space pioneer you build a reconescence spaceship in the space station that you have running for a couple of decades now, and set up a launching base on the moon that will reduce cost for a mission to mars.

And of you go. Mars is huge compaired to the moon and mineral resources are abundant. Maybe it is worth it setting up a small base there too. Yet travel times and cost are still enormous. Time goes by, your satelites are roaming the orbit of various planets in the solar system and some have even gotten as far as some close by star systems. Many planets to colonize and take advantage of their resources!!! Mars however is a priority as your competitors are also entertaining thoughts of exploiting the red planet. Of course all you can do in most other planets is setting up mining colonies and not real cities with parks, cinemas etc (this should make this feature doable for a civ game - you don't actually settle the planets and plant cities, you rather get a list of your colonies and a city screen for each, plus a map of space and the planets maybe. In any case you don't have to have extra earth-like planets and make the game too heavy).

That's it. a summary of the perfect civ game imo.

[MrFusion]

qiangdade - A Firaxis Limo should be pulling up outside your house any time now. It will transport you to a secret underground bunker at an unknown location. Inside, you will be taken to a huge darkened room. Around the outside of the room sit hundreds of terminals, occupied by waiting developers and artists. In the dead centre of the room is a raised platform. In the centre of that is a chair. On the chair is a plaque reading: "Civ VI lead designer". Take your seat... :D

Honestly, I think your ideas are the true way forward for the Civ franchise. This is how it should be. You are describing a very changed version of Civ - but one which clearly holds true to the core ideals of Civ gameplay and certainly moves it all forward. Complex empire interactions, interesting and continually developing gameplay - and a coherent, logical progression through the ages. Brilliant.

[qiangdade]

qiangdade - A Firaxis Limo should be pulling up outside your house any time now. It will transport you to a secret underground bunker at an unknown location. Inside, you will be taken to a huge darkened room. Around the outside of the room sit hundreds of terminals, occupied by waiting developers and artists. In the dead centre of the room is a raised platform. In the centre of that is a chair. On the chair is a plaque reading: "Civ VI lead designer". Take your seat... :D

Honestly, I think your ideas are the true way forward for the Civ franchise. This is how it should be. You are describing a very changed version of Civ - but one which clearly holds true to the core ideals of Civ gameplay and certainly moves it all forward. Complex empire interactions, interesting and continually developing gameplay - and a coherent, logical progression through the ages. Brilliant.

Wow, didn't expect that kind of feedback. thank you very much. really:o
Wouldn't care being lead designer (wouldn't mind either:p ), i just wanna play the described game.

[Belisarius3]

My wish is to fix how cities look in future era. I don't know
why but I just absolutly hate how the all black color scheme
doesn't blend in with the enviorment around it like previous eras do.

[kingdmen]

Baby Jesus you guys write a lot...

Gotta love trolling.

King

[deraal]

I got a group of friends, and once a week we used to get together and play RISK, 6 months ago I tried to establish Civilization 4 and everybody liked It from the beginning, BUT It takes tooo long. The only time we were able to finish a game was in an one-on-one (5 hours). so...

Multiplayer suggestions:
- MORE game ending options (like in "Risk") conquer that continent, defeat this opponent, get 50% of the landmass. (random for every player)
- OR Make an Option that makes the game quick as in CivRevolution
- AT LEAST make it to be possible to play a good game in 3-4 hours. or just finishable in one evening.

General suggestions:
- PALACE (makes it more personal)
- UNIQUE LOOKS of Civilizations
- SPORE-like development of Civilizations (warlike Civs can have this technologies and scientific Civs (creative Civs, productive Civs, expansive Civs, or hybrids) other ones)
- FOOD (and Hammer) sending to other cities (f.e.: Build in Berlin: Hammer to "Munich")
- OR be able to settle Settlers IN Cities to give them a population bonus (If this City has a bad grow or I want it to become strong quick like in Border-cities i send 3 settlers)
- TOURISM after a wonder is obsolete (gives ether gold, and/or even more culture)
- option to make later TECHNOLOGIES more expensive (if you go to war you end up having worse troops then the opponent when they arrive to the enemy gates.
- SMARTER AIs (no declarations of war from the other end of the map)

And finally REACTIONS from someone from Firaxis to our suggestions ;)

Thank you very much for the best games of my childhood.

[Cashew]

No Poland

Whether in Civ V vanilla or expansion packs I pray to god that Poland never gets included in this game because Polacks are a bunch of retards.

[Marthieu du Blois]

Having colonized other planets makes you have turns on them, just as on the Earth map. So you complete the turn on Earth, then Mars, then Ganymedes (Jupiter satellite) then Pandora:) then back to Earth, and so on.

Slower techs, faster production, so that we have time to screw out military even in the early ages.

Road to War mod type combat, and air missions. There arty has ranged bombardment, combat is the following: Artillery barrage
all-vs-all combat (um, not true)
survivors with Blitz can go again on order
fortified 'bombard capable' units auto-fire at the enemy
Fighter air missions: Strike
Bomb
Fighter engagement=deliberately attacking enemy fighters

Bomber missions: Strike - causes collateral damage
Bombard (defense %)
Port airbomb - can sink ships
Bomb factories - might reduce population
Bomb a targeted building
Bombard production

Also intercepted air units can shoot back (cause damage to attacker)

[Marthieu du Blois]

Expanding cities! Megalopolises flooding the map!

Say, each city can only have 6 pop. basically, and Masonry, Engineering, etc. similar techs raise this boundary by say, 3.

Buildings that offer workplaces=can convert specialists also occupy that much pop. space.

Once this boundary is reached, the new pop./building doesn't appear on the normal city tile, but on an adjoining one.

Example: have Masonry, so level=8.
City: pop. 6, has forge, temple. New pop. level reached. The newcomer is placed onto an adjoining tile, and that tile now becomes part of the city.
Further pop. growth now occurs onto that tile, and newly contructed buildings occupying space are also built there.

Example2: no Masonry. Pop. 5, temple, forge just built. Where does it appear? On the adjoining tile.

Example3: Medieval city (has Engineering): pop. 17, forge, temple, cathedral just finished.
If the Cathedral is built in any of the two tiles, then that tile would have 11 points, which is BAD:mad:. But if outside, then a tile wouldn't be filled in. So what?
The Cathedral appears in one of the city tiles, but thus one resident is put off into the new tile.

[Marthieu du Blois]

Unit types. Volunteer/militia: Automatically spawning if there is enemy near the city. (American Revolution mod)
Regular: produced with hammers or quiangdade method, equals the present (CivIV) units.
Mercenary: bought from other civs, gold upkeep, prone to be 'stolen' by spies by buying them in turn.

New cottage improvement system Cottages being created by settling workers. (Starbase, Final frontier mod)
Cottages growing by food+etc. or by the quiangdade method.
Cottages serving as extensions to cities by allowing them to work tiles by the cottage. Cottages extending the city radius
1 population of the city working the cottage, the pop. of the cottage (1-4) working the land.
Drafting units from cottages, or serving as source of specialists for the city?

Wonders or 'city improvements' built in cottages
The ability to draft units even if not in Nationhood. It's good that units take longer to produce, but what if I'm attacked:mad:?
Group diplomacy I can call more than one leader to a conference (Jalta conference, etc.)
There I could say things like this 'You X declare war on Y, then I give you 3 riflemen, and while you are at war with him, I give you 3 golds/turn'.
On conferences we could form Alliances, and the alliance should react as one civ. I mean: Declare war on Z ->vote. If success, then no Alliance member can make peace with Z except by exiting the Alliance.
Everyone make peace with X ->vote. If succeeds, then no member can declare war on X.
Actually all other UN and Apostolic resolutions.
US, European Union
The global market idea of quiangdade.

Better balancing of research vs production. Longer research times
Faster unit, building production
Ability to acquire units by other means than production. (Draft, buy from other civs)
Forts automatically produce something militaristic (Starbase, Final frontier mod)
The point of these is to make us able to wage war in pre-industrial eras.

More types of military units on slower speeds. Cuirassier only on Marathon
Fusilier on Marathon: Musket 9, Fusilier 12, Rifleman 16, Infantry 20.
Redcoat=unique Fusilier
Scouts Able to attack Workers
Able of taking defenceless cities
Ability to shoot up Workers (destroy by airforce)
Instability effects from Rhye. Those features are... easily the best I've ever (yet!) seen in any Civ. Even better than the ranged bombardment.
Ability to build improvements on ground that doesn't belong to me. Either as help to a friend, or as improving the area before I settle there.
Naturally occuring city placement. As There are already best spot markers for Settlers
City borders will grow naturally
Cities often grow too big (unhappiness, unhealthiness)
You could give the ppl. some incentive to do so it is realistic. No more Settlers!
Events concerning the appearance of unique units. Once I had a troll warrior in FfH, and was very very :( :mad: when I lost it because it was so unique.

[dogbert514]

some things I would really like to see in Civ 5.
Ability to load multiple mods at once.
A more realistic model of maintenance cost based on distance from capital. Roads and railroads should reduce distance based maintenance cost across the continent, and harbors once you have frigates and galleons should reduce the cost between continents. I also think distance based maintenance cost should reduce as you become more advanced. Once you reach the industrial age distance based maintenance cost should substantially reduce, and by the modern age there should be no distance based maintenance cost on the continent with a capital, and a fixed price for all cities on other continents.
A spherical map, so you can travel north on the top edge on the map and end up on the top edge on the other side of the world.
New air unit movement controls. it annoys me to no end that if I want to have bombers attack someone on another continent I have to create a city within the bombing range on that continent. I would like to see a way for bombers to attack across oceans, or a way to re-base to forts outside of your culture.
The espionage system from Beyond the Sword.
Many of other people have mentioned canals, bridges, and sharing food between cities. They should be added.
A way to have cities produce to multiple projects at the same time. There could be a reduced efficiency for constructing multiple projects. Also a great engineer or the equivalent unit that finishes production in one turn could be able to finish many small projects at once (eg. finish a granary, temple, barracks, and walls in one turn, or some other combination of early buildings).
To go with multiple production. Allow multiple research projects at the same time.
More future technologies.
Bigger maps and more varied maps created by the map generators. It gets some what boring when the continent map generator only creates maps with well defined hemispheres.

Some other things I would like to see, but might be harder to implement.
Horizontally center the mini map on your capital maybe with the ability to specify where longitude 0 is located for other countries. I don't see any reason why a country would not think that they are at center of the map before it was set to Greenwich.
Technology leak along trade routes. I forget which mod implemented this, but it would reduce the likely hood that there would be a country that can produce tanks and another that can only create chariots.
From Call to Power 1 underwater and possibly space cities with future technologies.
More types of WMD's. There are times when you want to nuke a small army and an ICBM is overkill.
Ability to launch more than one ship for the space race victory (eg. you discover faster engines after you launch the first ship and create a second that will arrive before the first does.). Also allow for more pieces to the space ship. I liked it in Civ 2 that you could customize the space ship based on how much you built.

[Marthieu du Blois]

dogbert514
Maintenance based on movement point distance. That is, how many movement points does it take to travel from the nearest capital to that city.
Multiple mods at any single given time is absurd, as many mods implement a single age. What would you say if you were told: Load this WW2 mod AND this Medieval mod? I guess you would go mad. :mad: :p
Technology dissipation using the religion spread mechanism from CivIV. Perhaps Plague from Rhye's and fall.

[qiangdade]

@marthieu du blois: i see we agree in a lot of things. especially the longer research times so it is actually worth to build an army of cuirassiers or catapults before they become obsolete. in slower speed games, units could keep being produced at the same pace, while tech and time slows down.

[Marthieu du Blois]

quiangdade

We do agree, but in slower games production has to slow down as well. Because if you could screw out units at the same pace, while techs and time would slow down by a factor of say 10, then you could make 10 times as much units of a certain tech.

And as now units would have resource upkeep, it would mean that:
a) slower game speed->more resources (supermarathon=prospector finds stuff every hex)
b) units need less resource
c) resources last longer
d) you end up with nothing worthy to produce.

This contradiction is most easily solved by slowing down production.

[qiangdade]

what i meant is make it worth producing armies of units that right now are becoming quickly obsolete. i wanna enjoy the middle ages and renaiscense more than how it's now

[Marthieu du Blois]

Not worth, but almost necessary!

If you have already constructed all buildings, then what do you do with your ample free time and production while you wait for the next tech to be researced? Go to war! Build military!:D (Isn't there an evil smiley?)

If you already have Alphabet then you can set everything to produce research, but that's lame.

[Marthieu du Blois]

Fantasy mod on 'Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game' or 'Warhammer Fantasy Battle' base. Games Workshop.

The intelligent (playable civ) species/races: Human
Elf
Dark elf
Dwarf
Chaos dwarf
Skaven (ratmen)
Slann (lizardmen)
Demons
Greenskins: Trolls (hopefully not including the Reader)
Orcs: Orcs
Black orcs
Goblins: Goblins
Night goblins
Forest goblins
Snotlings
Undead
Barbarian species: Fimir (different lizardmen)
Trolls
Giants
The only problem would be to get the copyright from Games Workshop.

[Starblazer]

Not introduce old civ and new one at the same time, but the possibility to chose, starting the game, only the old and during the game with transition from old era in modern, the civs change in real actual name. Example if I start the game playing the Romans, this will become Italians, If I start as Celtic they will become Irish, Ottomans become Turkish and so on.
Another interesting improvement, taking the idea from Alpha Centaury, is the possibility to change the world with the workers, for example digging a channel, or levelling an hill, or tunnelling mountains

[Mani_26]

eh if you refer to the celts their empire was from todays balkans to germany and france and furhter upp. So you wouldnt only be Irish. The celts would become germans and french and english and bunch of other countires.

check out the map below
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/pre_norman_history/iron_age.html

[Simkill]

Animations for multiplayer please!

[hawkunit]

The lack of an airlift option is the feature I miss most from this otherwise great offering. It already takes 10+ turns to make modern era units ... I don't have another 15 to burn waiting to deploy them to a combat zone when the game is going to END in 50. I have begun to dread the late game military engagements because of the logistical nightmare it creates to move a bunch of units in a timely fashion.

I will be devastated if this feature is not implemented via patch or future expansion.

[da_Vinci]

To manage the game once you have a million units, you should be able to create task forces of unit stacks than respond as one until you decided to split it. However they would get no special advantages. Basically control groups. I have been thinking that moving my "warband of doom" has been more tedious than moving my "stack of doom" ever was (stack of 100 moves in 1 click, warband of six takes six clicks).

As a solution, a "travel mode" for units, in which they can stack but can't fight, would be useful for logistics within the empire. You then unstack them and change them to combat mode at the front. Not too different from reality ... where troops pack into transports (ships, planes) to travel and unpack to fight.

dV

[thedawson]

This, for the most part, is an excellent string. Some great ideas comming out of here. Keep it up guys.

[pragmaticleas]

It would be nice to know how much each unit costs in terms of maintenance instead of just a lump sum as provided in the economic overview. Perhaps the Civilopedia and the production chooser can show this detail?

[jboomer]

I would really like to see the following. And I'm sorry for brining up things that are allready mention (I'm too lazy to read the whole thread).

1. In an earlier Civ (CIV 2 ?) the leaders changed with the times; please bring that back.
2. I miss the cottages that grew into little towns, I thought they were great and I'm sorry to see them go.
3. I rather enjoyed conquering nations and making them my colonies!
4. I liked religion, it made the politics more interesting.
5. The corporations.
6. Espionage.
7. How national borders use to work.
8. Random events/missions.
9. Diplomacy that sort of worked. I played a Civ 5 game where most nations greeted me as a warmonger even though I never started a war in the game. I usually won though. Ok, allways won as it was vs the AI.
10. The crusaders in civ 3. I don't know why but I liked those guys.
11. I think that it would be neat if every nation had their own art,it can be done as the modders did it for Civ IV.
12. Oh, and get rid of the annoying voices of the advisors! They had big names (ok sort of big names) for the ads, could they not have used those voices in the game?